After the Authors

I had a dream last night that I was a character in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.  Those who've read know it's partially a story about the relationship between an author and his characters.  My dream placed me at the end of the book, where I had to say goodbye to King as he left the world of the books and returned to Maine.  I knew that, despite any attempts I might make, my narrative was complete, and my story was done.

At some point, the authors of your life will leave you behind.  Or you will leave them behind.  Some difference, no difference.  It could be a girlfriend or an organization or a practice or anything.  She will stop taking your calls or they will inform you that you services are no longer needed or you will no longer be able to do the asana.  It is inevitable.  Entropy comes for everyone.

And when you wake up from the nightmare, you realize that you have no author, or that everything is your author.  Some difference, no difference.  The story keeps going, and what you think is an ending is just a really sad part of the book.

Or a really happy one.  Maybe if enough of your authors disappear, you can stop living narratives and start living reality.

Letting Go

To let one's self go to the currents of the world is the path to liberation.  To stop trying to force the world to be what one wants it to be and to surf on what actually is can free us all.

And for a recovering overachiever at Step One, it is completely terrifying.

Blocks

I want to move up, in the direction of my dreams and freedom and enlightenment and all of the good stuff.  But the day-to-day makes getting to a higher place so hard.  I can't think or write with a cold.  I can't think or write when I'm so tired.  I can't think or write with a 8 to 5 and teacher training and keeping up with the people I love and the five million other things that demand attention every day.

Part of the solution is to simplify, to do less.  I know this.  I need to clear off my plate that which does not serve me, and I am trying so hard to do so.  I think I'm at the point where I'm ready to start shedding layers, and I have full confidence that if I do so more opportunities that better serve me will appear.  I just need the courage to get started.  I need to jump, even if I can't see the landing spot, and trust that the universe will reciprocate my gesture of good faith, catch me, and lift me up.

Boy, it's hard to think on cold medicine.  Blergh.

If You Were There, You Are There Now

I brought a case of the blues back with me from vacation.  Amy Schneider's class tonight helped a great deal.  I wasn't at my best, but I made the conscious effort to not let the blues stop me but to integrate the blues into my practice.  I worked with the blues, rather than against it.  I decided to be softer and more fluid.  It felt great.

Still, in savasana, the blues planted doubts in my head.  The blues said that I'd never reach the states of awareness that I wanted to reach, or even make it back to the states of mind where I felt I was making real progress in the past.

But, see, the blues fucked up when they mentioned the past, because I know enough about theoretical physics to be dangerous.  Theoretical physics sees time as a dimension like space, which opens the door for time travel and other, more interesting ideas.  Grant Morrison introduced me to one of my favorites, which is, if we were all fifth dimensional entities that could look down on the four dimensions humans perceive, we could theoretically point to different areas in time, and we'd see that all moments in time are actually part of the same thing and could really be said to be happening at once.

So, if that's the case, every moment in my life is happening right now.  The time years ago in Florida where the universe manifested itself to me as interlocking golden light that makes up everything is happening right now.  The time in savasana where I realized that God is real is happening right now.  There's no beginning or ending to anything, which means that if I have ever had a transcendent, spiritual moment in which I glimpsed higher existence, I can have it right now, if I just open myself to it.

And since we're all one thing anyway, if I've had such moments, you can too.

Needless to say, savasana got really, really trippy after that.  And really, really good.

Meditation Overload

I am in the midst of an identity crisis that cuts to the core of who and what I want to be.

Do I want an end to suffering?

Do I want to awaken?

Or do I want to transcend the limits of human perception and trip the light fantastic?

The first wonderful experience I had in meditation came about two years ago, thanks to Grant Morrison and his wonderful little book called The Invisibles.  Morrison sold me on the idea that there was a hidden world just outside of the reach of the every day that humans had and could access, if they'd just dive far enough into the weird and wild, where all the good stuff resides.  The fan website Barbelith led me to Condensed Chaos, which is as good an introduction into the principals of magic as I can imagine.

One of the first things an aspiring magician needs to learn is how to achieve the gnostic state.  Basically, you close your eyes or look into a mirror or a bowl of water and just...let you mind go, wander, play.  Don't forbid yourself from seeing anything, and you might see everything.  When I stopped worrying about whether what I was seeing was real, I could see a lot more cool stuff, a lot more meaningful stuff.  I saw myself as Gandalf retreating to my castle of ice.  I met my spirit animal, the grey wolf.  I journeyed deep into the heart of death and found complete peace there.  I learned so much about myself, and I felt I was moving forward.

Books got me on the gnostic path, so it's fitting that a book should have knocked me from it.  Magic had shown me glimpses of the whole world, but I didn't want a piece of the world.  I wanted the whole thing, and Buddhism Plain & Simple seemed to offer that.  All one had to do was let go of everything superfluous and just...wake up.  Awaken to ultimate reality.  Right now, because there is only now.  The key wasn't to let your mind wander but to stay present in the moment.  If one could understand right now completely, without hope or fear of anything else, one might actually wake up, and then one really could see everything.  As I learned just a little bit about Tibetan Buddhism, I saw a lot of stuff floating around like bodhisattavas that matched some of what I saw in gnosis, which only furthered my belief that Buddhism was big enough to encompass magic and a lot of other stuff.  I felt I was moving forward.

With the beginning of yoga teacher training, I've encountered a third organizing principle for meditation.  Yogic meditation seems to want to calm the fluctuations of the mind, not for the sake of awakening, but just because.  Because it will make you better, fuller, more content.  I confess I've thought the least about this type of meditation and that it appeals to me the least.

Frankly, all that the yogic ideas behind meditation have done is bring to a head a situation that had been developing for quite some time, which is that I've officially hit meditation overload.  Too many chefs have spoiled the broth.  I'm confused.  I don't know whether to seek calm or enlightenment or visions from another dimension of reality.  Too many ideas are competing for the time I spend in lotus.  I don't feel like I'm moving forward.

In the long run, I'm not too concerned about where I am.  I'm not going to stop meditating, and I recognize that even the best journeys have times spent at pit stops, lost, or stuck in a ditch.  I believe Steve Hagen when he says that all we need to do is show up and meditate each day, and the practice will teach us everything we need to know.  Ultimately, I think all of these paths have one final destination, anyway.  The Buddha and the great magicians and yogis of history are all chilling at the top of the same mountain together, calmly sipping mushroom tea and tripping off the world in all its glory.

I get all that.

But that doesn't mean I'm not frustrated now.

Everything and Nothing That You Were

Yesterday, as part of its year in review, the New York Times ran a memoriam for Beastie Boy Adam Yauch that didn't sit well with me. Specifically, it maintained that MCA was never down with the Licensed To Ill-era frivolity:

"“Fight for Your Right” created expectations; the Beasties met those expectations by touring with cage dancers and a giant inflatable penis and hosing one another down with Budweiser onstage. But they weren’t those guys, not really....Even in “Licensed to Ill”-era interviews, you can see the Beasties already growing weary of playing the roles they’d assigned themselves."

This, frankly, is a load of shit. Yauch himself, in a quote the author includes, noted that he was more than willing to play along with the shenanigans: “I went and got drunk and made some stupid music.”

I have a problem with any attempt to scrub a person's record after they die. To do it after a Buddhist dies seems especially disrespectful and clueless.

Look, MCA was an asshole. He was a guy who gleefully made a lot of money putting women in cages on a stage.

And then he changed.

When we pretend, "oh, he was always this saintly person, they didn't REALLY mean all the bad shit they did," all we do is miss the fundamental lesson: Adam Yauch was an asshole. In my life, I have certainly been an asshole. If you haven’t been an asshole, you’ve been something else that you’re not proud of.

You know who else was things he wasn’t proud of? The Buddha. I prefer not to get into the Buddha’s previous lives stuff, but even if you accept that he was the end result of a lot of lives dedicated towards awakening, at the beginning of that chain of lives, the Buddha was not special. He was not a saint. He was as far from perfect as the rest of us. At some point in his chain of lives, the Buddha was an average guy.

And then he changed.

He got better. He found calm, and he knew that if he, vile sinner though he might be, could find enlightenment, anyone can.

When we make people we admire into saints, we rob them of their humanity, and we lose the most critical message of their lives, which is that anyone can be a hero. Anyone can wake up. It doesn’t take someone special. It doesn’t take a saint. It takes you, and you can do it right now. No matter what you or I have done, an end of our suffering is available to us. It is our birthright, it is our destiny, and we can have it right now, in this moment.

Happy New Years.

On Drinking

It's New Year's Resolution season, and I've got the fever.  For my 2013 resolution, I shall undertake one of the most common resolutions.  I shall try to drink less.

A bit of context is important, especially since my boss is one of the more frequent readers of this blog, post reboot (hi, Russ!).  I don't feel that I drink too much now.  I mean, self deluders of the world unite and everything, but in my case, I really don't think I'm what society would consider a problem drinker.  I have a beer after work about 2-3 days per week.  I will have more than that most weekend nights, but seldom more than four.  If I have four, I will not drive, because I know that four beers equals .08 BAC equals our good friend John Dewey.  Most importantly, my drinking has not caused any problems in my life of which I am aware.  My family and friends have not indicated any level of discomfort.

With that disclaimer out of the way, one can reasonably ask the question: if no one thinks you have a drinking problem, why the resolution to drink less?  To answer, I need to reference an idea that has been percolating at the back of my mind for some time but came into focus when I read Anthony Alvardo's excellent D.I.Y. Magic.  The book contains a whole chapter on different legal substances one can consume to alter one's perspective, like a bunch of coffee or yerba root.  He also, as I recall, delves into the effects of several illegal substances, none of which I use or will use, because I like being employed.

Anyway, the idea that crystallized reading Alvardo was that one should use or not use substances to alter perception, a topic that frequent readers will note is one of this blog's animating ideas.  Almost all of the ideas that grab me these days, from Buddhism to string theory to magic to whatever, speak to man's limited ability to perceive reality in his normal state and his potential to transcend these limitations and grasp reality more fully.  To me, any effort that changes my normal practice with minimal foreseeable negative consequences is worth the effort.

Well, what's more normal for me than drinking?  I've been going out and having a pint ever since it was legal to do so, and I don't really know what my body and my mind and my soul are like without the limited amount of alcohol I do consume.  Can I handle awkward social situations without liquid courage?  Will cutting back on booze improve my yoga, my meditation, my gnosis, and my learning?  Does alcohol have positive effects that I take for granted but will become aware of in their absence?

I have no intention whatsoever of cutting out all alcohol now or ever.  There are too many things to love, and I will never pass up scotch with my lady or cocktails at the Velvet Tango Room or Kirin Lights with Jimmy and Beav or Untappd check ins or...well, any time that is special, and feels like the use of alcohol will push me towards the kind of freer mind and body that I am trying to develop.

But give up alcohol as part of day-to-day life and see what happens?  Yeah, that's something that very well may shift my perspective.  Sign me up.

Still D.R.E.

Given that my readership pre-hiatus was, uh, just my friends, I don't think I need to spend much time explaining why I was on hiatus.  I moved to Cleveland.  I took a job crunching numbers with Cleveland Metropolitan School District.  My whole life flipped.

Well, not the whole life.  Some things stayed the same.  I still love my family.  I still went camping with the homies.  I still date the best woman on the planet. I still dig Terry Riley.  I still watched good triumph over evil.  I still almost have pincha mayurasana. All of these constants have been tremendous comfort during a time when my life was in upheaval.  

I also try to be mindful of these constants as constants as much as possible now because there's a great lesson about how little concepts like "change" and "constancy" mean.  I've changed jobs and locations, which feels like a lot because it is, but the bedrock of who I am remains blissfully unchanged, for which I am so, so grateful.  But that bedrock is an illusion, too.  All the things in the preceding paragraph--my yoga, my relationships, the kids wearing the Pennridge green--all of it changes constantly.  The second I define it, it changes, and I struggle for words to describe how that feels, because it feels like a koan.

One thing I know for sure: I miss writing.  It's one of the few parts of my old profession that I do miss, and this blog was a great source of personal development and a way to connect with others.  I don't know if I can live up to the blog's name any more, but I am committed to trying to write here as frequently as possible.  Hope you stop by.

What We Owe the Gay Community

On Sunday, I had a great exchange with friend and former PASC staff member Saige Martin. He indicated that he would never attend a Pride parade so long as they continued to be the gaudy, flashy, decadent events they often are. In his view, such events provided fodder for the Right's efforts to continue the systematic oppression of the LGBT community. Saige would like to see Pride parades that show community members as normal people wearing normal clothes and acting in ways that the broader society would consider socially acceptable. In Saige's eyes, such parades would go a long way to erasing negative stereotypes and help the efforts of activists like himself to ensure full equal treatment for people of all sexual orientations.

(I've tried to summarize Saige's argument as best I can. Saige, if you read this, please feel free to clarify anything I got wrong.)

In case you couldn't tell from my entry on the Sexcamaids, I feel a lot more positive towards Pride. As pessimistic as I can be on a lot of issues, I am very optimistic that Western society is moving towards personal liberty, at least on social issues. Each year, more and more people seem willing to accept other people's lifestyles, so long as they do not harm someone else. We've clearly got a long way to go, but relative to where we were even 20 years ago, we're moving in the right direction.

And society owes a lot of this progress to the LGBT community. I am no expert on the history of personal expression in the Twentieth Century, but here's how I see it: after the backlash against the social movements of the 1960s, most groups stopped pushing the envelope and started to work for more incremental solutions, solutions that the mainstream society could accept. Word to them. That's one, completely legitimate way to achieve social change. Certainly, parts of the LGBT community adopted that strategy.

But other parts of the LGBT community seemed unwilling to compromise. Given even the tiniest opening as a result of the upheaval in the 1960s, certain people decided that they could not nor would not go back to the way things were and that they needed to allow their personality to flower in full. I see Pride as an outgrowth of that. The average gay man couldn't strut and preen in public like, oh, Elton John or Liberace...except at selected events one or two times a year, where, if only for a moment, they could express themselves. Hell, they could even go OVERBOARD in expressing themselves. In other words, while the rest of society moved away from expression at all costs, parts of the LGBT community embraced it.

We know how I feel about outlandish public displays of self-expression. But heterosexuals like myself have the privilege of being able to be as flamboyant as we want in public while still enjoying all the rights that come as part of what is deemed as normal and avoiding the stigma attached to being in the out group (no pun intended, but it's pretty good, isn't it?). I can't even imagine the courage it took just to put on a damn costume and dance in the streets during the 1980s and AIDS and all that horseshit.

So, to the LGBT community: thank you. Thank you for pushing the envelope. I know you don't necessarily do it for the broader society, but the broader society needs what you do. It needs to regard gender roles as more fluid. It needs to see that sexuality can be public without being vulgar. It needs so many of the things that it wouldn't acknowledge without you.

PS: I am sure everyone can tell, but I am painfully inexperienced at writing and thinking about issues of sexuality. In referring to the LGBT community, I've tried to use the terms I thought were most accurate or complimentary, but I freely admit I may have used the wrong words at places. Please feel free to correct me so I can get it right next time.

Sex and Mermaids

What's it like to be down with the Sexcamaids?

You may have seen stories or, hopefully, pictures from Coney Island's 30th Annual Mermaid Parade, held this past Saturday.  Basically, the Mermaid Parade is a Pride for everyone, a chance for any and all to let their freak flag fly in the middle of Brooklyn in front of half a million people.

In my incredibly biased opinion, no group better represents what the Mermaid Parade is and should be all about than the lovely Sexcamaids, a dance troupe that calls themselves 'the sirens of the sex world."  Saturday, they were the ladies wearing just enough clothes, rocking the best, most coordinated moves, pushing the loudest, rudest speaker stack, and otherwise behaving like those untouchable bad girls you were scared to talk to in high school.

(Please keep in mind that a heterosexual man wrote the preceding paragraph and that your experience with the Sexcamaids may vary.  For example, every little girl saw the coolest set of big sisters to ever walk the Earth.  If you want to see happy, you should see an 6 year old girl who sees the Sexcamaids and realizes that, despite whatever her parents have told her, she can play dress up for the rest of her life.)

I had the opportunity to join the 2012 version of Maids' support group, the (ahem) Sea Men. The Sea Men are the Alfred to the Maids' Batman. We do the logistical stuff that kept them dancing and looking good. We push along the sound system that plays their music. We drag along the coolers and give them the water that keeps them from passing out. We deal with the overzealous paparazzi. As befitting any superhero support team, the Sea Men are in costume, which is how I found myself pulling a cooler and dancing down the streets of Coney Island wearing nothing but a sailor's hat and a pair of white rhinestone-encrusted booty shorts.

It was one of the best experiences of my life.  Even as a sidekick, I felt and still feel like an honest-to-God superhero.

I had a bit of a "come to Jesus" moment Saturday.  Now I understand, to a far greater extent, Pride and Goth and Lady Gaga and S&M and so many other things.  Such diverse phenomenon usually get lumped under the banner of sexuality, but after Saturday, I'm convinced that all of these things are about so much more than sex.  They're about expression and freedom and experimentation and role play and performance and power and giving it up and community and billion other things for which either I can't find the word or the word doesn't exist.  We lump so many things under the banner of sexuality because, like sex, we're profoundly scared of many of these things, because they're SO powerful.  We worry that if we let them out even a little, they threaten to flood us and knock away all they fragile little bridges we've built that we think makes us into functional adults who don't have to sleep in cardboard boxes.

I'm not a stranger to self expression or risk taking or any of this stuff, but being a Sea Man hit me in a way I hadn't experienced before.  My enduring memory of the 2012 Mermaid Parade will be that I played with the boundaries of who I was in a way that I hadn't done before, and I had 500,000 people in the crowd who were THRILLED that I was doing so.  When you take a risk and show some side of you that you've rarely shown before in front of that many people, and they show you so much love in return, it can make you feel like every chance you've ever taken to be a better, more complete, more free person was completely worth it, and it makes you want to do it again and again.

Even if you can't see yourself down with the short shorts and pasties crowd, the Mermaid Parade and the Sexcamaids have a lesson for you, and it's really probably the only lesson that matters.  You know that thing you want to try, but you're scared?  You're worried you'll get fired, or your spouse will judge you, or you're just too old/Christian/cool/whatever?  Do it.  Find a safe space and supportive, decent, caring people who will provide you a healthy environment to try something you've never tried or even though of, and let it rip.  There's nothing to lose and everything, everything, everything to gain.

Thank you for letting me tag along, Sexcamaids.  If you'll have me back, I'll haul, push, water, or whatever you need in 2013.

Postscript: Don't get me wrong. It's not not about sex either. Ladies, I am in love with each and every one of you, and so is the rest of New York. You know it, and you wouldn't have it any other way.

The Road Map to Happiness

Elephant Journal has a great article in which Julian Walker discusses the meaning of asana, or the physical practice of yoga.  I can't recommend it enough.

I posted it on Mike Lyons' FB wall.  Like any good yoga teacher, he challenged me, probably without even meaning to.  Specifically, he wondered about my reaction to the comments that maintained that the physical practice of yoga is deeply rooted in ancient Indian tradition, a point with which Walker disagrees.  I reacted on his wall, and I'd like to expand upon what I wrote here.

I tend to think of what happens at places like the Greatest Yoga Studio Ever as the starting point on a treasure map.  It's not the starting point for the quest, of course.  Something got the map into your hands, and nothing has a clean beginning or ending anyway.  But when you go to enough modern US physical yoga class, you start to realize that there is something to this "yoga" thing.  On the most mundane level, your body should feel a whole lot better, but a lot of people can't escape the feeling that yoga offers more than "just" relief from physical pain.

And what happens from there is entirely up to you and your desire to follow the map in pursuit of the treasure.  The map can be hard to follow, but it's all right there.  The physical practice can make you want to meditate, pursue a spiritual teacher, give up meat, live a more compassionate life, and so on and so forth.  I actually do believe that once one comes to view yoga as central to his or her identity, one has taken the first step on a path that can lead to nirvana.

There are some pretty sizable caveats, however.

1. No two people get the exact map or the exact same final destination.
2. Point number 1 means a lot of people are going to make a lot of choices you don't understand.
3. Capitalism has also become pretty damn good at exploiting point number 1 to sell you things that they say should be on your map but probably don't need to be and even shouldn't be.
4. As a consequence of #3, you're going to find yourself struggling with some very unyogic emotions, thoughts, etc. about much of what passes for yoga.
5. Yoga's certainly not the only way to get to your goal.  Buddha would say you're at your final destination right now, and your task is just to get out of your own way.  If that sounds good to you, maybe you should read Buddhism: Plain and Simple rather than going to an asana class.  Maybe you should go for a run.  Maybe you should work on your motorcycle.
6. Why do you need a goal, anyway?

I guess I think the ultimate value of asana is that it's something you do every day for its own sake.  I've come to believe that if you do anything at all long enough and consistently enough, you will do that thing through something like the full range of things we can experience.  You'll rejoice and struggle and, if you're paying attention, learn how to rejoice in the struggle.

The other great thing that asana can give you is its failure.  I will never do every possible pose, and someone will always do better and more poses than me.  Most importantly, consistent asana practice has not and will not solve all my problems.  The great gift here is that realization and the question that accompanies it: "Well, fuck.  Now what?"

That's the most important question there is.

If ashtanga or universal principles of alignment or some other physical practice seem to be moving you forward on your map, ignore everything I just said and keep practicing.  For all I know, I may end up right next to you.  I reserve the right to change my opinion and reject any and all of this in the future.  After all, I have no idea where I am on my map, other than a vague notion that I am moving in the right direction.

Yoga as Identity

When I tell people I do yoga, I'm always surprised at how many of them are apologetic that they, too, do not do yoga, as if failing to do yoga was some type of sin.  After a conversation last week, I think I finally understand this reaction.  The general bobo population may be used to aggressive missionary sermons from yogis about how awesome yoga is.

But that begs another question.  Why would so many yogis care if other people did yoga?  It's hard enough to find a space for your mat at the 5:45 class at the World's Greatest Yoga Studio.

The Babarazzi hit on part of the answer with their hilarious and scathing discussion of asana as signifier.  If my experience is any guide, yoga can become a central part of one's identity very quickly.    The Spectacle recognizes this and has developed numerous ways for yogis to signify to the outside world that they are serious about this yoga thing.  You can practice on your Manduka mat in your Lulu pants and hit Whole Foods for some quinoa on the way home.  The capitalist pig dogs will nod earnestly until you turn around, then chuckle and count the money.  The Spectacle has plenty of non-financial ways to participate, like fancy asanas or (ahem) blogging.  As long as you're worried about whether others regard you as a serious yogi (or a serious sports fan or faberge egg collector or whatever), you're firmly caught in the Spectacle's web, and It's pretty sure you'll eventually buy stuff.

While the Babarazzi nailed the diagnosis, their bedside manner is shit.  The problem with so much cultural criticism is that it's wrapped in so much hipster condescension, as if the authors can't believe that anyone would be so lame as to care what other people think.  Caring what other people think is a natural urge that is essential to any effort to establish community.  Yes, capitalism exploits that urge.  Yes, people fall for the capitalist commodity version of community and everything else over the real thing way, way too frequently.  But, like, shouldn't those of us who recognize that cycle want to help break it?  Shouldn't we want to help people experience the real benefits of yoga, one of which is that you can stop caring so much about hitting a handstand?  If so, snark is a bad idea, because snark alienates.  When I act superior, I am not likely to be heard or respected.

And truth be told, looking down your nose at people who try too hard to show how yoga they are is a pretty effective way to communicate to others how yoga you are.

For whatever my amateur opinion is worth, my answer to both the problem the Babarazzi diagnosed and the problem with the diagnosis is to let go.  You don't need Lulu to practice, and you don't need to condescend to point people on the right path.

And now, for no reason, hilarity.

Packing Conflicts

At the end of the month, I am moving out of my apartment.  Like a responsible adult, I have already started packing.  Remember, nothing makes me feel better than feeling like a responsible adult.

Like most everything else in my life for the last year, packing leaves me profoundly conflicted.  I am excited about what is to come but terrified that I don't know what that is yet.  I am both excited and terrified this move represents a step towards a new job and possibly career.  I am excited and relieved because moving out represents another break from my soon-to-be previous employer but sad because living in this apartment has meant so much more than said employer, has opened up so many amazing doors, and has led to the creation of so many wonderful friendships.

I've reached the point where I'm pretty comfortable with who I am.  Few things that can happen to me could still rock my sense of self, although I know that something down the line will do just that at some point.  But as for now, starting down a move and job fears, all I can think of is that I've done all of this before, so I don't get too worked up about anything.  However my situation resolves itself or doesn't, there will be good and bad aspects to it.

So I think being conflicted is probably an indicator that I can see more of the whole the picture.  Not all of it by a long shot, but enough to know...something worth knowing, I guess.

All of these conflicted emotions, and all I'm doing, at least for now, is putting a lot of stuff in storage and moving up to Bull City.  Given the 95 percent chance that I eventually move out of the Triangle, I can't wait for, and can't stand the thought of, the conflict I'll feel then.

One thing I am not conflicted about: LSU has a real shot of knocking off Kentucky.  CHAOS ALWAYS CHAOS (c) Takao Yamada.

The Black Swan, Speed Racer, and Why Good is Overrated

Last night, I watched The Black Swan for the first time.

Dawg, HER ARMS TURNED TO WINGS.

It has come to my attention that some fools didn't like this movie.  Specifically, some fools be saying that this movie is melodramatic camp filled with ridiculous imagery.

Fools, STOP BEING FOOLS!!  Of COURSE it's melodramatic camp!  Some among you might recognize that there's nothing fundamentally wrong and a lot right with well-executed melodrama.  But I'd argue that The Black Swan is cool and amazing beyond any camp elements.  I love a well told, well executed plot as much as anyone, but to me, that's not what movies do best.  Movies have the ability to take advantage of image and movement.  Where a movie like Frost/Nixon, which I also love, uses plot as the device to engage the intelligent viewer, The Black Swan uses imagery, psychology, and melodrama.  The Black Swan people spend just as much time thinking about what Natalie Portman should look like as the best traditional playwrites thought about crafting a coherent plot.

Besides, in the postmodern world, do you really care about why a really cool image hits the screen?  Of course you don't.  You care whether the sheer specter of Cthulhu coming out of the water is the most terrifying, nightmarish image you can think of, precisely because it comes from a place that doesn't entirely make sense to you.  Does it hit you on a really primal, pre-rational level?  Does it get into your dreams at night?  Does it mess with your head, stick with you, blow open your mind to new possibilities about things that crawl around in muck hidden from everyday experience?  These are the questions that matter for the most meaningful art of our age.

That might seem to lead to down the road where I'm apologizing for the Michael Bays and James Camerons of the world, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Those lazy hacks are just playing to people's expectations and giving them comfort food.  In of themselves, special effects do not blow people's minds, because special effects have become the expectation for a certain type of film.  The people behind movies like The Black Swan, Speed Racer, and other such movies are working as hard as they can to expand our horizons.  In true postmodern/hip-hop style, The Black Swan blends genres to create the effect.  I can't imagine how the jerk marketing executives at Fox Searchlight felt when they started watching what they probably thought was going to be a beautiful little dance movie with Queen Amidala that they could sell to families at Christmas only to realize that it became a psychological piece about 30 minutes in and a complete psychedelic mindfck for the last half hour.

Look, man, I don't know how many ways to say it: the organizing principle of TWEDP is that human perception is limited, and that anything that gets us out of our rational mindset to consider what we have previously excluded is a great thing.  I could never, ever, ever have imagined that a movie like The Black Swan, or the images within it, could be imagined by people.  That makes it a win.

You Only Get What You Give

Is yoga spiritual?  Sure.

So is running.

So is knitting.

So is accounting.

So is any activity, pastime, occupation, whatever.

Where "is" equals "can be."

Why are you doing it?  How are you doing it?  Are you doing it mindfully?  Does it help you engage in the most rigorous possible self-examination?  Does it make you question your every relationship with the world?  Finally, are you prepared to do it for a really, really long time, until such point where it provides the answers to everything, until it encompasses everything?

All of those questions are much more important than what the it is.  In my completely elementary view, those questions, or some more eloquent, comprehensive, and advanced statement of them, are the most important thing with which a person can concern themselves.

Those questions are everything.

So are kittens.

The One Path

So I've decided that Buddhism is not for me, at least for now.

I fully accept what I believe to be the Hindu notion that many ways exist to reach heaven, nirvana, the tenth level, Barbelith, whatever you want to call it.  Hermann Hesse said that people who reach such heights will often say things that seem to directly conflict with the teachings of other enlightened ones, but that's only because teachings are words are concepts that cannot possibly express the whole of Truth. It's all one thing.  I believe that with all my heart.

But while the Truth might be singular, I am a flawed finite vessel.  As I've read different versions of the One Truth, I've often found myself more and more confused.  Should I be going through my day with the intention to spread joy, equanimity, compassion, and kindness, or should I strive to be unattached?  What about when I meditate?  Even though that I'm sure an enlightened being knows beyond all doubt that there is no difference between the approaches, I do not.

I recently had a conversation about the necessity of giving one's self over to a teacher.  At the time, I thought we were talking about the need for discipline and the subsuming of one's ego, but now I'm pretty sure that limits are part of that equation.  If all paths lead to the top of the mountain, the only mistake one can make is trying to take multiple paths at once, because then you are always returning to the beginning of the journey.  I'm not claiming this approach is correct for anyone other than me, and I reserve the right to change my approach when the situation dictates.  The Buddha's definitely right that if you hold fast to a fixed doctrine, you will see it fail you eventually.

But for me, now, I need to take one path and look forward to the top of the mountain, where I'll meet people who say completely different things that all mean the same.

A Valentine for You

Having done a lot of gratitude posts lately, I was a little hesitant to go forward with the following concept for Valentine's Day.  I'm also conscious of not blowing up anyone's spot.  I guess it's ok to put people's names in these blog entries, but I do want to respect the privacy of everyone, especially the people for which I am most grateful.

But then I thought again.  The world needs nothing so much as it needs joy, equanimity, compassion, and kindness.  In that spirit, Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, but especially to the following people.  I'm keeping names out of it, but I'll be as specific as I can so you know when you're getting shouted out.

The Anthem.  Get Your Damn Hands Up

• To my family, for everything ever but especially for their support over the last year.
• To my professional colleagues who have stood by me through the last year.  I learned that the upper boundary of the best behavior from caring, dedicated professionals is much higher than I had thought.
• To my friends  who have been with me from the jump.  I could not have made it through without you.
• To my friends who I just connected with over the past year.  You've made life in North Carolina richer and more fun than I thought possible.
• To everyone who has contributed to my yoga practice ever.
• To all the students I have had the pleasure of teaching.
• To the airplanes and internet providers that keep me close with all of the above.
• To the sun, the moon, the sky, the earth, and the spirit.
• To Lindsey Andrews, whose former FB profile pick I've been looking for an excuse to steal for months.  Words to live by.

Early Bonus Scotchtime Manichean Madness

Note: I cheated a little and wrote this last night, while drinking scotch to numb the damage my idiot dentist wrought.  Warning given.

I believe Lovecraft.

Who I haven't even read yet.

But mean to.

(Once I found out that one-sentence paragraphs annoyed Takao, I dedicated my life to them.)

Anyway, I believe H.P. Lovecraft.  The universe is big and huge and scary and doesn't care about us even a little.  We are scared and alone and can't possibly comprehend the forces that are not aligned against us, but are completely indifferent towards us.

And yet.

And yet.


I believe Morrison.

As a species, we are destined to evolve and transcend.  We are all united, and united we will breach the walls of the possible, and it will be glorious beyond any words, and it is already happening.

You are a light.

Don't waste it.

Spacing Out For Fun and Profit

Maybe the most basic magical technique I use on a semi-regular basis is called scrying.  It's easy, it's helpful, you can do it even if you think magic is bs, and it can be a ton of fun.

Sit in front of something nondescript.  I've read you should use a bowl of water or a mirror, but I've done it staring at a wall or into the darkness in bed.  Then, relax your eyes and let your brain go wherever it wants, and trust that everything you are seeing is real.

In my two favorite scrying episodes, I've seen myself as a Gandalf-type figure in white robes and a kick-ass white beard living in a tower of ice, staring down at the pristine, icy landscape with regal disdain.  I've met my spirit animal, the wolf, and I'm not sure he's a particularly friendly fellow.  He tends to chase other creatures away and jealously hoard his kills.  I've also stared into complete and utter nothingness, the darkness behind the dark, and found that it's not that bad.  If that's the afterlife, at least it will be relaxing.

It's what the the shamanic among us might call "having visions."  "Talking to spirits."

Are you freaked out?  Feel the need for a confession and Hail Mary?

Relax.  If nothing else, my "visions" give me an excuse to post up the picture of Three Wolf Moon.

And as you might guess from the quotation marks, I don't think there's anything paranormal or spooky about these "visions."  I am sure that a reader can identify a psychological technique that calls for a subject to let his mind do whatever it wants and analyze the results--free association, maybe?  That's all that's happening here.  

I learned a great deal about myself from these episodes.  I'm a loner.  I like solitude.  I can isolate myself and push people away.  If you had asked me a year ago, I guess I would have said I knew this stuff about myself, but I certainly wouldn't have felt it in my gut and accepted it as true the way I do now.

And I'm a guy who wants healthy relationships, so it's pretty useful to know that I have this streak in me.  It allows me to control how it manifests itself better, I hope.  Maybe I'm a little less quick to blow people off.

The larger point: when I talk about magic, I could really care less about whether the tricks and spells work, although I have no doubt that they do, for skilled magicians under the right circumstances.  The reason I enjoy thinking about, reading about, and, yes, practicing magic is because it frees me to experience things I hadn't even considered before.

I consider myself to be a pretty practical and skeptical guy, and here I am writing about wolves and relationships.  This stuff is FUN, and I've learned a tremendous amount about myself and my world.  My dabblings have broadened my perspective on the world and myself.  Letting the weird into my life has made me more open minded and less afraid.  THAT'S the real value here.

Magic Week: How to Summon Manatees

I love manatees.  On a list of my absolute favorite things, in which I include things like "my parents" and "my friends," manatees are easily in the top 20.

This is the story of how I summoned manatees.

My family has a house on a bay in Southwest Florida, and you can see manatee from our dock maybe once a week.  Last March I was visiting and saw one on my second day down there.  When I told my mom, she told me she hadn't seen one at all that season.  I felt bad for her.  Because manatees are awesome.

Here's where the magic happens.

I spent a good part of my week visiting in a state of deep meditation and contemplation of the aspects of my environment of which we are generally unaware.  In that state, I remember wishing my mom could see a manatee, because it wasn't fair that anyone should not get to appreciate something so gentle and wonderful.

Within maybe two hours a manatee cruised on by.  So did another one two days later.

I will now take questions from the audience


You know people can find anything you put up on the Internet, right?
Yes.  Potential employers and soul mates, I am not insane, nor will I ever attempt to hex you.  Even I knew how, I wouldn't, and it wouldn't work.  Anyway, please finish this entry.  It should dispel any questions about my sanity.

So...you can summon manatees?  Like right now you could summon a manatee?
Right now?  No.  Even if I were in Florida, it's the cold season, when manatees are less active.  I don't know if I could replicate the combination of deep gnosis and sincere unselfishness that was key to my success.  Most importantly, it doesn't work like that, at least in my experience.  Nature is really big and really complex.  Each of us is pretty small.  We don't get to snap our fingers and make nature do tricks at our command.

Could I get myself into the right state of mind in the right time of year and summon them again?  I certainly intend to try when I go down there later this year.  I may succeed, I may not.

If you can't do it again, did it really happen?
Given a million chances, you could never recreate the first events that led to falling in love for the first time.  It took a combination of effort, circumstance, and luck that you could never again replicate.  Magic isn't quite like that.  If I were a more dedicated or capable magician, I probably could get manatees to show up again. The point is that replication is not everything.  Stuff happens all the time that we can't recreate, but that doesn't make it less real.  It still happened.

Ok, so what exactly do you think you did, summoner?
Two things, the first of which is pretty prosaic.  I put myself in a state where I was far more likely to notice any manatee activity.  The type of meditation I was in made the entire world incredibly interesting.  I spent at least an hour just looking at the different flowers and plants in our yard.  I savored the smells of the water.  It's not surprising I was better able to hear when a manatee breached or recognize the ripples in the water they make.

The other thing?  I was in a great mental place.  The universe recognize that and sent out some signals, and the sea cows obliged.  It's magic, fool.  I don't know how it works.  I'll get into some of the justifications better magicians than I give for how it might work in tomorrow's post, but even they are only guessing.  There are forces at work in the universe that we cannot directly perceive or explain,.  But we may, if we're lucky, good, and persistent, be able to tap into them.

Or it was just coincidence.
It certainly doesn't feel that way.  In my heart of hearts, I am completely sure I did something magical that day.  Nothing will ever convince me otherwise.  But you could be right, skeptic.  Maybe it was coincidence.  I can't prove that it wasn't.  Ultimately, it comes down to what you want to believe.

And you really believe this?
Nothing is true.  Everything is permitted.